Tyrant (35 page)
Authors: Christian Cameron
The boys were competent, but the rest of them were not. Nicomedes set the standard by falling during his first remount and missing the shield every time he rode by it. He affected an air of humorous disdain, but he hid his irritation poorly. Kineas guessed he was unused to failing at anything.
Like every other gentleman on the sand.
Ajax rode up alongside the city’s fashion leader and twirled a javelin in his fist. He shouted - Kineas couldn’t hear the words, but it was a tease - and rode at the target, scattering slaves who had intended to help their master. Nicomedes cursed, pulled himself up with a fist in his horse’s mane, and followed, and Ajax threw true. Nicomedes’ throw was wide by a hand’s breadth. His curses flowed across the arena.
‘The old men ride like sacks of goat shit and the middle-aged men are so afraid to get themselves dirty they remind me of fucking priestesses,’ said Niceas. ‘And that’s
before
we try riding in formations.’
before
we try riding in formations.’
Kineas tried not to smile. ‘The boys aren’t bad. I want to put all the best men in one company of fifty. Make me a list. Let it be known, so that men will struggle to be in that company.’
‘Think of that yourself, did you?’ Niceas said with a hard smile. The six Athenian companies of horse were rivals in every kind of procession and game. He pointed with his chin at Eumenes’ father, Cleomenes, who sat quietly with a group of his friends. They were not participating. ‘Not quite mutiny,’ he said. ‘But he’s half the problem.’
‘I’ll see to it,’ Kineas answered, turning his horse.
An older man threw a leg over his horse and fell straight off the far side. ‘You intend to fight Macedon with this lot?’ Niceas asked.
‘You too?’
‘Me first. I’m told that the gods themselves have told you to fight Macedon. Did they send you that whip, too?’ Niceas pointed at the heavy whip in Kineas’s sash. ‘A troop of companions would scatter these like dandruff at the first charge. Leave ’em for the peltasts to clean up. Half of them will fall off and stay down until their throats are slit. Tell me if I lie.’
Kineas wheeled his horse. ‘Sounds like you have a lot of work to do, then.’
Niceas’s ferret face wrinkled in a rueful smile. ‘That’s what I knew you’d say.’
Kineas rode over to where Cleomenes and his twenty friends and allies sat. ‘Which station would you prefer to go to first, sir?’ he asked.
Cleomenes ignored him. One of his friends laughed. ‘We’re gentlemen, not soldiers. Don’t include us in this farce.’
Kineas looked at the man who had spoken. ‘You lack a breastplate. Your horse is too small. Please report to my hyperetes.’
The man shrugged. ‘And if I say no?’ he said.
Kineas didn’t raise his voice. ‘I might fine you,’ he said. ‘I might report you to the archon.’
The man grinned, as if that was not a threat he feared.
‘I might beat you to a bloody pulp right here on the sand,’ Kineas added. ‘Any of the three are within my legal right as hipparch.’
The man flinched.
Kineas turned to Cleomenes. ‘I am a gentleman of Athens,’ he said. ‘I hold no grudge that you voted against me as a citizen and again as hipparch. That is how democracy functions. But if you fail to do your duty, we will very soon come to a test that cannot benefit anyone.’
Cleomenes never met his eye. He was looking at someone else - probably Nicomedes, his principal rival in the city. ‘Very well,’ he said tersely. ‘I feel a sudden need to throw a javelin.’
It was a curiously empty victory. Cleomenes walked over to the butts, mounted his horse, and threw - competently - and then sat down again.
Kineas tried a different tack. He waved at Coenus to join him, and indicated Cleomenes. ‘There sits one of the city’s principal gentlemen. He dislikes me. He’s behaving like an arrogant fool and I can’t figure him out. Befriend him.’
Coenus chuckled. ‘As one arrogant fool to another, you mean?’
‘Something like that,’ Kineas agreed.
The close order drill was terrible. The first attempt to form the rhomboid formation that Kineas preferred was hampered by the size of the hippodrome and the numbers involved, but it would have been horrible nonetheless. It took them half an hour to get every man to see his place in the formation, and they couldn’t ride ten strides without becoming a mob.
Kineas sighed and gave it up. Instead, he formed them in a column of fours and rode them in circles until most of them learned to keep their intervals - a full hour.
He was hoarse from shouting. All the professionals were hoarse, and so were some of the boys who had ridden the plains. He shook his head and rode over to Cleitus. ‘I’m losing my voice. Would you order them to disperse and take their lunch?’
‘With pleasure,’ Cleitus said. And when he had fetched his own bread, he returned and said, ‘I knew you were the right man for the job. Look at them!’
Kineas took some sausage from Sitalkes. ‘Why? They look like dog shit.’
Cleitus frowned. ‘No, they don’t. They look like they are trying. If they stop trying, we lose. So far, we’re winning. Get them through three of these, and they’ll feel the difference. Could set quite a fashion. Can I have some of that sausage? The garlic is making my stomach rumble.’
Kineas handed over a chunk of sausage. Cleitus cut off a piece with a knife and tossed it to his son, who was eating with Ajax and Kyros. They were sitting on their horses to eat, like Sakje. In fact, all the young men who had gone with Kineas were sitting mounted to eat.
Cleitus offered a skin of wine to Kineas. ‘Rotten stuff. Perfect for soldiers. So - we’re fighting Macedon?’
‘News travels around here.’ Kineas took a pull at the wineskin. They were going to be late fetching the king.
‘Is it different in Athens? The way I heard it, you killed a squad of murderous Persian assassins - or perhaps they were Kelts - and then thrashed the archon with your big whip and told him to behave, and then your eyes rolled back in your head and you prophesied that we would defeat Antipater.’ Cleitus’s light tone didn’t cover the anxiety on his face.
Kineas handed back the wineskin. ‘That’s pretty much how it was,’ he said.
‘My first rhetoric tutor told me that my facetious ways would get me in trouble, and look, he was right. Kineas, I proposed you for citizenship. My friends made you hipparch. Don’t get us all killed.’ Cleitus grimaced and took more sausage.
Kineas pulled off his helmet and scratched his head vigorously. Then he met Cleitus’s eyes. ‘I don’t have a place to invite gentlemen to dinner. Will you host for me? I’ll explain to your guests why I think we have to fight, and what they stand to lose if we don’t.’
Cleitus grunted. ‘I was hoping you’d just say the rumour was wrong,’ he said.
‘Macedon is coming here,’ Kineas said.
The king was waiting. He and his men sat like gold-armoured centaurs. The column of city cavalry rode up and halted, more like a mob than Kineas liked, and Petrocolus and Cleomenes rushing to embrace their sons ruined any pretence to military discipline.
The Sakje didn’t seem to mind. The king pushed through the throng of Greek horsemen to reach Kineas. ‘You’re late!’ he said, smiling.
‘I offer profound apology, O King. The archon awaits us.’ Kineas motioned with his whip at Niceas, who raised his voice, and the city troop began to reform.
Satrax shook his head. ‘I’m teasing you. What is time to us? But it seems to mean so much to you Greeks - the second hour after noon!’ The young king laughed. ‘Try getting the Sakje to assemble within a single moon!’
‘Yet you would fight Macedon,’ Kineas said.
‘Oh, it’s easier to assemble them for war,’ Satrax said. He narrowed his eyes. ‘You’ve changed your mind. I can see it on your face.’
‘I have, too,’ Kineas said. He shrugged. ‘The gods spoke to me.’ The king shrugged. ‘Kam Baqca assured me that this would happen. I am not surprised she is right. She is nearly always right.’
Kineas watched both hyperetes pushing the column into some form of order. He had a few minutes. ‘I have spoken to the archon.’ Satrax nodded. ‘I think he will support the war,’ Kineas said. ‘At least, for now.’
‘This, too, is as Kam Baqca said it would be.’ The king smiled, showing his even teeth and the full lips that hid under his moustache and beard. ‘So - I will lead my clans to war against Macedon.’ He didn’t sound excited. More resigned.
Kineas nodded. The day’s muster had taken the eagerness out of him. He was going to lead these enthusiastic amateurs against the veterans of fifty years of war. ‘Gods send us victory,’ he said.
‘The gods send victories to those who earn them,’ said the king.
Kineas attended the meeting between the archon and the king on the porch of the temple of Apollo, but he didn’t speak. The archon was a different man - direct, sober, blunt - a commander of men. He changed faster than an actor who took multiple roles in the theatre. Kineas had seen it done in
Oedipus
- the king was also the messenger. In Olbia, the drunken tyrant could also be the philosopher king.
Oedipus
- the king was also the messenger. In Olbia, the drunken tyrant could also be the philosopher king.
Cyrus stood at his right hand and wrote the terms of the treaty. The king and the archon drafted it in an hour and clasped hands, each swearing by Apollo and by their own gods to support the other in war, should Macedon march in the spring. They did not pledge eternal friendship. The king did not agree that Olbians were free to travel the plains without hindrance, but he did agree to forbear taxing them for as long as the treaty was in effect.
After they clasped hands, the archon mounted a horse and escorted the king to the walls of the city, and the two men chatted as they rode. Kineas, directly behind the archon, heard more silence than chatter. In the arch of the gate, the archon drew rein.
‘We will need to meet in the spring to discuss strategy,’ he said.
The king looked out over the city’s fields and nodded. ‘I will need time - and space - to muster my people.’
The archon was an excellent rider. Kineas hadn’t had an opportunity to note it before. He surprised Kineas by backing his horse a few steps and catching Kineas’s bridle. ‘My hipparch pressed me to make this war, O King. So I’ll send him to you in the spring.’
Satrax nodded. ‘I will look forward to that,’ he said.
The archon nodded. ‘I thought you might. We’ll know for sure about what Antipater plans when the Athenian grain fleet comes in the spring.’
The king’s horse was restive. He calmed it with a hand on its neck and some words in Sakje, and then he reached for Kineas’s hand. ‘In the spring, when the ground sets hard and the grass is green, I will send you an escort.’
The streets were crowded, and the gate was almost surrounded by the people of the town and the suburb. The king waved in farewell, and then he made his horse rear and leap, so that it almost seemed that the two would gallop across the sky, instead of merely riding along the road.
At his side, the archon said, ‘You enjoyed your time among these barbarians?’
And Kineas, who could dissemble when need required, said, ‘I befriended one of their war leaders. I had this whip as a guest gift.’
The archon nodded slowly. ‘Your friendship with these bandits may be more of a boon than I thought, Athenian. They like you.’ He nodded again. ‘Their king is not a simple man. He has education.’ He gave a nasty grin. ‘He is young and arrogant.’
‘He was a hostage in Pantecapaeum,’ Kineas said.
‘Why did I never meet him?’ the archon asked. He shrugged. ‘Or perhaps I did. They breed like maggots. And their women are so unchaste - hard to know which little bastard is the get of which sire. Still, they’ll make good fodder if we must fight this war.’ Kineas stiffened but said nothing. ‘Which I will now work like a slave to prevent.’ The archon turned his horse. ‘Back to the palace!’
Cleitus gave a dinner in his honour on the night when Athens honoured her dead and her heroes, and he drank too deep of too much wine. He drank too much wine because he was called to speak in public. At Cleitus’s urging, and with help from Diodorus and Philokles, he prepared an oration, and after dinner, when urged by Cleitus and all the guests, he rose from his couch and went to the centre of the room like the politicians who had attended his father’s dinners in Athens. He had never thought to use such tactics himself, and his hands shook so that he had to thrust them into his tunic.
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